Adoptee, adoptive father put human face on issue of rape

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By Ryan Bomberger
for The News-Sentinel

Friday, November 2, 2012 - 12:01 am

The Democratic party has staked its position on abortion, firmly planting its feet in blood-soaked soil. Common ground is not, nor has ever really been, a genuine goal of the party. It proudly celebrates its embrace of an industry that kills more than a million, innocent, unborn children every year and wounds countless women and men in the violent process. Liberal activists will parade around as gigantic vaginas, publicly recite explicit lines to pro-statutory rape “The Vagina Monologues,” wear T-shirts proclaiming “I Had An Abortion,” support partial-birth abortion and stand with the abortion chain that refuses to report rape. But they're not the extremists?

Indiana senatorial candidate Richard Mourdock is yet another pro-life politician whose words have been distorted so that the pro-Obama, pro-abortion, pro-liberal feminism mainstream media can mercilessly attack him for somehow attacking women. Anyone with half a brain could understand his comments to mean God intended life to happen, not rape. But mainstream media doesn't rely upon intellect, but raw, uninformed emotion. They keep the issue in the abstract, careful not to humanize it to show why a pro-life conviction would embrace even a child conceived in such circumstances. Abortion advocates know revealing the whole truth would have a way of speaking to one's heart.

Rape. It's one of the most horrific things anyone can do to another human being. War-ravaged nations see unimaginable acts of such cruelty all the time. In our own country, there is a cultural war that trivializes the inhumanity of it. Our pornography industry creates rape fantasies, comedians make rape jokes and abortion moguls like Cecile Richards profit from the silencing of actual cases of such violence.

Fewer than 1 percent of abortions are a result of rape, incest or protecting the physical health of the mother. Yet liberal media attacks on Mourdock, Todd Akin, Paul Ryan, Ann Marie Buerkle, Star Parker, Michele Bachmann, Dr. Alveda King, Charmaine Yoest and other publicly pro-life leaders have one goal: to justify 100 percent of abortions. In that process, the media and its abortion allies obscure what we're actually talking about — human life.

I am the 1 percent. And there are many others out there who offer a similar story of being born as a result of rape. We are the tangible examples that Planned Parenthood and pro-abortion activists love to hate. We present another side of the story — not one promoting legislative agendas, but one that personalizes this issue so recklessly and carelessly handled by mainstream media. There are real lives at stake, and abortion only allows us to pretend that those lives don't exist.

Over the years, many women have shared their personal stories of rape with me through events featuring The Radiance Foundation. And in each emotional exchange (where both of us end up crying) they tell me why they didn't abort their child or for those who had, how my song “Meant to Be” has brought them healing for the first time. My birth mother's courage to endure nine months of a traumatic pregnancy has had reverberations she never could have known. Adopted into a loving multiracial family of 15 and now an adoptive father myself, I cannot ever express my gratitude to a woman who helped to defy the myth of the “unwanted.” And now The Radiance Foundation, founded by my wife, Bethany, and I, celebrates the beautiful intrinsic and irreplaceable value of every human life. My birth mother's singular choice of life for me has, literally, affected millions.

Politicians trot out people to advance their causes all of the time. It's way past time for pro-life politicians to realize this is not a war that will be won solely on words, but from the real-life stories that come from those whose lives have been affected by rape. In addition to my own story, there are many more of us out there, victims and would-be victims of such a senseless act of cruelty that can be redeemed. Our lives are reflective of how our humanity is extremely compassionate when we don't compound the horror of rape with the violence of abortion.